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Thursday, July 23, 2015

Exposing the Heiress by Jennifer Apodaca {ARC Review}

Exposing the Heiress (Once a Marine #3)

by Jennifer Apodaca

Coming August 4, 2015

This Marine will protect her at all costs...
When wealthy heiress Alyssa Brooks finds out her stepfather has been paying her fiancé to marry her, she's humiliated and betrayed. She quickly breaks the engagement, only to be blackmailed by her now ex-fiancé, who threatens both Alyssa and the son she gave up for adoption. With nowhere to go, she turns to the one man she can trust.

Former Marine sniper Hunter Reece's lethal skills could save Alyssa's life. But his little sister's best friend has turned into a woman, who is an irresistible mix of secrets and sexiness. And while Hunter can trust himself to protect her, he can't trust himself to keep his attraction hidden...or even pretend to be the man that Alyssa remembers.

Because the only way to keep the lovely heiress safe is to become the one thing he knows she could never love...a killer.

Since this was my first time reading a book by Jennifer Apodaca I wasn't really sure what to expect. All I know was that blurb totally sucked me in and I knew I had to give it a go... And okay, in total honestly that cover might have had a little something to do with it too. That being said, while this was my first Jennifer Apodaca read, it definitely won't be my last.

So what's it all about? Alyssa is months away from marrying her fiancee, Nate, when she overhears a conversation between him and her stepfather about how he's paying Nate to marry her. When she confronts Nate about it and calls off the wedding he becomes a completely different person than the man that she knows. Fearing for her life and the life of her son that she gave up for adoption, she goes to Hunt for protection.

Hunt used to be a sniper in the Marines but he knew he had to give it up when killing became too easy for him. He's definitely not the young man that Alyssa remembers, but he still offers his protection to the girl that used to be his sisters best friend.

The attraction between Alyssa and Hunt is apparent from the get-go but Hunt isn't relationship material and knows that Alyssa deserves more than a fling so he resists her at first. Unfortunately, or maybe fortunately for him, Alyssa knows that even a fling with Hunt is better than never knowing what could have been between the two and goes after her man.

I absolutely loved the couple time between Hunt and Alyssa. The way they opened up to each other and felt safe enough with each other to share secrets that they haven't shared with other people. Hunt was definitely in a vulnerable place when it came to relationships, and I'm not going to lie, I got a little tired of Alyssa having to constantly reassure Hunt that she wasn't afraid of him, but his vulnerability made him sweeter in a way that most alpha males aren't.

The suspense, while not exactly lacking, wasn't really what I was expecting. We knew who the villain was, obviously, but most of the book was basically just them lying in wait and trying to figure out Nate's end game. It wasn't bad, per se, just not as nail biting as I was expecting.

I would have loved for a little more at the end of the book and that's the only reason why I couldn't rate this one five stars. Nate and Alyssa definitely had a couple things that they needed to work through and I felt that Nate needed a good grovel scene for abandoning her at one point, but besides my own personal pet peeves, this was a great read and definitely warrants me going back and reading the rest of the books in this series.